Through the Valley of Shadow I Fear Not.
In Ernest Hemingway's, The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway expresses Santiago to be an artistic visionary of realms between that of sleep and awake. "He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife. He only dreamed of places now and of the lions on the beach. They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy" (Hemingway 25). Through exile and self-awareness, Santiago learns the true meaning of his artistic integrity from his speech with the marlin to his wise words of the sea, "But the old man always thought of her as feminine and as something that gave or withheld great favors, and if she did wild or wicked things it was because she could not help them. The moon affects her as it does a woman, he thought" (30). Never to express his notions and feelings through art, he does so as one who has a way with words.
Santiago constantly observes the world that takes place around him throughout the novella. "A man is never lost at sea- (89). Reveling in the beauty in which he experiences and sees with the ocean. Whom he calls la mar, being a feminine name for the ocean, explaining that he sees beauty in the sea and an ongoing bittersweet relationship with the ocean. This is truly an artist and ones personal perspective battling through the trenches of the mind. Sorting through all thoughts, running through a mind that contains rivers of divine imagination and creativity trying to find what combines to make the ultimate expression. Every creature that comes across Santiago and his journey at sea is mentioned in strange exotic detail. "During the night two porpoises came around the boat and he could hear them rolling and blowing. He could tell the difference between the blowing noise the male made and the sighing blow of the female.